each face that sings
by marginaliana
Summary: [The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues] Almost four years on, and Dickory still hasn't managed to master 'quiet and observant.' But can she and Garson solve The Case of the Painted Paintings?
1. Chapter 1

"I think Professor D'Arches has lost it," Dickory announced. In front of them lay sprawled the amassed work of twenty different art students over three and a half years, packed into a dingy storage room: sketches and drawings in wide, flat artists' portfolios, canvases piled together and secured with elastic or jumbled into boxes, all of it labeled with either illegible handwriting or overwrought calligraphy.

"Lost it?" George said. "He never _had_ it." He huffed out a sigh. "How the hell are we supposed to make a sensible exhibit out of this?"

From behind them came a little huff of breath, a noise that could have been either laughter or a disapproval, and Dickory started at the reminder that they weren't alone.

"Oh, sorry, Ann," she said, turning. "I was just… overwhelmed for a moment there."

By the time Dickory could see the department secretary's face, it was back to her customary severe expression, void of whatever emotion she might have possessed. Dickory winced mentally. _Almost four years and I still haven't managed to achieve quiet and observant._ But instead of saying something sharp Ann merely held out the storage room key.

"Don't lose it," she said. "I have to order a new key at least once every semester and it's a pain. If you do, you'll be responsible for the charges."

Dickory nodded to indicate she understood and took the key. "Thanks."

It seemed this was enough to get Ann to unbend a little, and she gave Dickory the faintest hint of an approving nod before leaving them to it. Dickory tucked the key firmly into her pocket and turned back to the storage room. "Where should we start? Just a quick skim through what's here to see what looks interesting?"

They had exactly seven days before the exhibit opened, first to sift through the morass of work and then to put a selection together in some semblance of a thematic collection, complete with typed labels.

"Yeah, that sounds good," said George, using the box nearest the door to prop it open. "Too bad Harold and Claudia already did all the street signs pictures for their exhibit. That would have been a sure winner."

Dickory couldn't help but roll her eyes at Harold Silverfish's blatant grade-grubbing. "I'm not so sure," she said. She reached for a portfolio and began to flick through it. "Some of that stuff was terrible, and I'm sure D'Arches can't have been pleased at having to look at them all again. Hmm." She pulled out a sketch and passed it over, a drawing of the Empire State Building at dusk, shaded in charcoal." How about this? We could do 'landscape of New York' as a theme."

* * *

By the end of two hours they'd tentatively decided on a theme – portraits – and had created a space on an upper shelf to place the pieces they intend to use, populated with three paintings and a handful of sketches. There were still more than half the boxes and portfolios remaining, however, and George agreed to meet up the following morning, an hour before class.

"By the way," he said, just as Dickory was locking the door to the storage room. "Did you send in your application yet?"

The tiny amount of optimism Dickory had managed to generate over the past two hours dissipated as rapidly as a snowflake on a manhole cover. "Not yet," she muttered. The MFA application to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago was already filled out, tucked inside the copy of the Complete Works of Piero della Francesca that lived on her bedside table. The envelope even had a stamp on it. But she hadn't sent it.

George gave her an exasperated look. "The deadline is next week, isn't it?"

"Yeah," said Dickory. "It's written! I just haven't decided if I'm going to bother."

She must have looked really pathetic because after a moment, George's expression softened. "I'm not going to badger you about it, but you should at least apply. Don't let Donald put you off." Donald had made it clear that he thought Dickory should get a proper job and move out of Garson's place, rather than go halfway across the country and make herself poor all over again. Not because he doubted her talent, he'd been careful to say. It was only that he thought she'd be happier with money. "You can put off the decision about actually going until you find out if you've been accepted or not."

"I know," Dickory admitted. It was good advice. But she knew she wasn't going to take it.

What was more, George seemed to know it, too, because all he said was, "Just think about it, okay? And I'll see you tomorrow?"

"I will. See you." They parted in different directions, George to the back of the building and Dickory out front, past the department's main desk. She gave Ann a half-hearted wave as she passed and got a nod in return, then went out through the doors onto 2nd Avenue.

Outside, it was raining, a slow drizzle that did nothing to lighten her mood, especially since she hadn't remembered to bring an umbrella. She trudged home, thinking about the application. George was right, surely – it couldn't hurt to apply. But there was a part of her that felt she had to make the choice now, to decide once and for all if she thought she was good enough to try to be a proper artist, or if she ought to give up that dream and get a job in advertising like George or even working for the city like poor Harold. If she was always going to be second rate, then sending in the application would just be a waste of everyone's time.

Probably what she should do, Dickory knew, was ask Garson's opinion. He was an artist, a brilliant one, and he could see to the bare truth of things like no one else she'd ever known. If she wasn't good enough, Garson would know. But she hadn't been able to bring herself to ask him, or even to raise the idea of graduate school in the hypothetical.

Dickory tripped over a discarded soda can, caught herself, and kicked it into the gutter in disgust before continuing on towards home. Up ahead she could just make out the turn off to Cobble Lane to the right off 7th Avenue. As she watched a figure came through the trees out onto 7th and turned, walking in the opposite direction. Dickory's gaze passed over the resentful set of the person's shoulders, vaguely familiar but unidentifiable from this distance. She picked up her pace, feeling suddenly curious, but the figure's strides were longer, and by the time she'd reached the entrance to Cobble Lane whoever it was had disappeared from sight. She shrugged and let herself in.

The house was quiet, though that wasn't unusual. Dickory stowed her bag in the downstairs apartment and went up to see what Garson was doing.

He was painting, a slick portrait of a local businessman that made the man seem like a fine, upstanding member of the community. He'd been in for three sittings already, and Dickory had felt like she wanted a shower every time he looked at her. On the second easel another canvas, Sonneborg's canvas, was draped in its customary red velvet. She still thought of him that way, somehow: Garson and Sonneborg, two separate people living one life. Even his time in jail – even his confession to her about Isaac – hadn't changed that. But at least now he let her look at the Sonneborg paintings when they were finished.

Dickory tidied in silence, not wanting to interrupt him. She knew him well enough now that she could see when he was fighting against himself. Sometimes when she came in he'd look at her right away or after a minute or two, ask questions about class, talk about whoever had been sitting for him recently. Other days – the bad days, Dickory privately referred to them – he would paint on without speaking, as if he couldn't bear to have to pretend to be Garson, but also couldn't bear to be Sonneborg, either.

Today wasn't one of the good days. Garson painted for a solid three hours, his hand steady as he made small, precise additions of paint to the canvas. Dickory finished screwing caps on tubes of paint and folding costumes, then sat down in the library half of the studio and started on her reading. The midterm exam for D'Arches' curatorship class was only two weeks away, even if she and George had to do their exhibit project this week as well. Finally, just as Dickory was finishing forty deeply boring pages on the history of the concept of provenance, Garson came out of his funk with a sigh, dropping his brush into the cup of turpentine and heaving out a huff of breath. "Oh, hello, Dickory," he said. He glanced at her briefly, then turned away and walked over to the large mirror in the corner of the studio. "What time is it?"

She looked at her watch. "Four."

"Good," he said. "Not too late. I'm having dinner with the Vogels, but that's not until seven."

"Do you need me to—"

But Garson was already shaking his head. "No, it's fine." He still wasn't looking at her, just studying his own face. Dickory bit a fingernail, wondering whether to say something. Or what to say. Then the doorbell rang, and she hurried away to answer it with relief.

"Oh, hello, Dickory."

"Hello, Chief Quinn," Dickory said. She had negotiated a cessation of rhyming two years ago (in exchange for not calling every one of the plainclothes officers 'Tinkle' no matter which one of them it was), but that hadn't stopped Chief Quinn from looking disappointed every time he thought up a rhyme and then remembered the rule. Today he must have thought up a good one, because the expression on his face went from surprise to delight to disappointment within the span of a few seconds.

She held open the door to let him enter and followed him up the stairs. "Do you have a case for us?" She and Garson had consulted on quite a few cases over the last couple of years, after their insights on those first few had proved accurate, and Dickory had come to enjoy the process of puzzling through evidence in search of the vital clue. It was something she could feel unequivocally good about, catching criminals, even if the spark of genius came from Garson far more often than it did from herself.

"I do," said Chief Quinn. "And it's a doozy, if I do say so myself."

"Afternoon, Chief," said Garson, doffing an imaginary hat. "What have you got for us?"

The chief eyed the act of whimsy with suspicion. "Garson." He set his briefcase on the table in the library and opened it, pulling out a manila folder. "I call it The Case of the Painted Painting."

* * *

Once Dickory had made coffee, she joined them in the library, settling into the third wingback chair and pulling over one of the photos that the chief had brought. It was a picture of a painting, framed and hung on a wall somewhere, though she couldn't tell where exactly. The subject of the painting was a pale house, set in the distance and framed with groups of bare trees. The colors were simple, browns and greens and yellows, and the brush marks were spare, lean. "Hmm," she said. She reached for another photo and found, to her surprise, that it was very similar to the other: a house in the distance, two stands of trees, all done in the same style and palette. Not an attempt at forgery, just similarity. Only this one, she could see after a moment, was simply clumsier, the lines thicker and less confident. "Someone obsessed with stealing paintings to match his décor?"

"It's weirder than that. Over the last three weeks," Chief Quinn explained, "there have been five paintings stolen from major galleries and museums in the city. But instead of just stealing them, in each case the thief leaves another painting to take the place of the original, something similar in subject matter and in color. The first one was—"

"One moment, chief," said Garson. "An exercise." He turned the rest of the photographs to face Dickory, and she could see that they, too, were grouped in pairs. "Which is which?"

"This one doesn't count," Dickory said, pulling aside a photograph of a rather nice Monet and its dingy counterpart, "because we went and saw it for class just last week." She considered the others carefully, and after a moment sorted them into two categories. "This one, this one, and… this one are the originals."

Garson gave her an approving look. "Very good." Dickory flushed at the praise and ducked her head to hide it.

"How on earth could you tell?" asked Chief Quinn. "One dancing woman's as good as any other, as far as I can see."

"Don't tell your wife that," said Garson.

The chief glared at him, and Dickory intervened before things could devolve any further. "Countless hours of listening to Professor Smith talk about quality of light, that's all. You should take a night class." This suggestion was strange enough to distract the chief from his irritation.

"Maybe," he said, rubbing his chin. "Maybe. In any case, this is what we have. No witnesses, no fingerprints. All we have are these replacement paintings. My guess is that he wanted the thefts to go unnoticed for as long as possible – that's why he put something in place of what he stole."

"No," said Garson, "no, that's not it. If he wanted that, our thief would have tried forging the originals."

"That's not forging?" said Chief Quinn.

Now it was Garson's turn to glare. "No. A forger would try to make the painting look as similar to the original as possible. Not just something with vaguely the same subject matter and color palette." He traced the line of red in the image of the Jackson Pollock replacement painting with one finger. "This is… ego. Setting up his paintings among the greatest works of history."

Dickory had been examining the paired images of three women, one version a Picasso and one the replacement painting. "There's something familiar about this one," she said, picking up the photo of the replacement. "I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think I've seen something like this before. Not the picture, really, but the style." Garson took the photo from her and looked it over for a long minute.

"It doesn't ring any bells for me," he said. "So that could mean we're looking for a young artist, maybe a student. Maybe not, though – I've been out of the market for a long time."

Chief Quinn pursed his lips. "I was hoping you could work your artist's magic," he said, making a gesture that seemed to encompass both magic and art, though neither in a particularly flattering manner. "You know, figure out where he bought his canvases, or that he paints using his left foot with a brush made from the hair of a Peruvian mountain goat or something."

Dickory shook her head. "Canvas is canvas," she said, "and there's a thousand places to buy it. That won't do you any good. Brushstrokes might tell us something. They're not signed? If it was ego, I'd expect them to be signed."

"Some of them _are_ signed," said Chief Quinn. "But not readably – they've been smudged over with fresh paint. The museum guys tell me it's fresh, that is. I've got some experts trying to see if they can remove it, but it's slow going." He sighed.

The doorbell rang again, and Dickory went down to answer it. "Oh, hello, Dickory," said Finkel.

_I'm going to change my name to 'Oh hello Dickory' if this keeps up,_ Dickory thought, but, mindful of the agreement with Chief Quinn, all she said was, "Hello, Finkel. Looking for the chief? He's upstairs."

"Thanks," said Finkel. He took the stairs up two at a time, leaving Dickory to scramble up behind him. "Chief, they need you back at the station. There's, well— a hand and a foot and nothing else, and—"

"Coming." The chief stood, pushing the photographs towards Garson. "Listen, you two hang onto these and give me a call in the next couple of days to tell me what you think, okay?" In a whirl of cigar smoke, he was gone.

Automatically, Dickory went to the guest room closet and brought out the hats. When she came back down, Garson was standing at the mirror again. He took the hat from her, but instead of putting it on he merely turned it over in his hands, watching them in the mirror. "Dickory..." he said, hesitant. "Is—" He stopped.

_God, he's being even weirder than usual today_, Dickory thought. Then suddenly he turned and met her gaze, and the intensity in his eyes made her heart thump in surprise. She'd seen his eyes up close before: sometimes kind, sometimes cold. But never like this. It seemed as if he was looking for something, looking right inside her, and for a moment Dickory felt both exhilarated and frightened. And then he turned away, the tense set of his shoulders easing abruptly.

"Nevermind," he said. "Come along, Captain Kod. The game is afoot!" He flipped the deerstalker onto his head in one smooth movement.

_Oh_, Dickory thought, a little dizzy, and then, _What just happened?_

"Now, brushstrokes, brushstrokes," Garson said, slipping into his British accent. "Captain Kod, you are out of uniform! You cannot expect to catch a criminal without your uniform."

Dickory put her hat on, said, "Yes, Inspector Noserag," and stopped thinking about anything else.

* * *

Firmly ensconced in his persona, Inspector Noserag put a photograph of a painting into her hand, the one with the house and the trees. "What do these brushstrokes tell us, Captain Kod?" He steepled his hands in front of his chest.

Dickory held the photo closer to her face and traced the line of one of the trees with a finger. "Slanting to the right as they go downward," she said. "Therefore, the artist is right handed." After Garson's lecture on right-handed versus left-handed hatching techniques, Dickory had attempted to observe the effects of her own hand in different media. Her ink hatching went from right to left, exactly as he'd said, but her painted strokes, even supposedly vertical strokes, tended to slant towards the right at the bottom of the stroke.

"Good work," Inspector Noserag pronounced. "What else?"

_Why am I doing all the work here?_ Dickory wondered, but tried to come up with something else to say. Other than 'third-rate,' which was obvious. "Uh." He was looking at her expectantly, and after a moment she blurted, "All the same size?"

"Is that a question, Captain Cod?" said Inspector Noserag.

"All the same size," said Dickory, more firmly.

"Which means...?"

Dickory shrugged.

"He's only using one brush," said Garson, dropping out of character for a moment. "And consider the texture."

Dickory dutifully considered the texture for a moment, but since she was working from a photograph it was difficult to see anything other than the glare from the skylight. She tilted the picture, trying to get a better view, but it was hopeless.

"I grant you it's not easy to tell from a photograph," Garson said magnanimously, "but try a different one."

Dickory looked at another photograph, then a third. Finally she gave in. "What kind of texture am I supposed to be seeing, Garson? I mean, Inspector Noserag?"

He gave her a look. "Precisely. There hardly is any. The paint is quite thin on the canvas. Ergo, the artist was poor."

Dickory flushed at the memory of her own early painting techniques, but didn't deny the truth of the insight. "So we're looking for a right-handed artist with no money," she said, sarcastically. "Surely there can only be one or two of those in the whole city."

"Patience, Captain Kod," said Inspector Noserag. "We're making progress." Then suddenly he swept off his hat, and was Garson again. "But we'll have to work on the case tomorrow. I'm due at the Vogel's soon."

_Didn't he say seven?_ Dickory thought. _It can't be that late._ But now that he wasn't wearing the hat, Garson wouldn't meet her gaze. He held out the hat, and Dickory had no choice but to take it. "All right," she said.

"Good," said Garson. And then he turned away, and was gone.

* * *

What Dickory really wanted to do was paint, to find that state of mind which came from emptying her thoughts of everything but the canvas. But she hadn't the time, not with the midterm coming up and so much more to do on her exhibit project with George. So instead she read for a while, then cooked dinner, a thrown together pot of pasta with sauce for herself and Isaac; she ate hers bent over another fifty pages of "Cultural Works and Cultivated Disposition," trying not to get spatters on the book. If it was in good condition she could re-sell it at the end of the semester. She read until midnight, until her eyelids were drooping, and then climbed into bed thinking she would drop off immediately.

And now it was three a.m., and she was still awake, hands folded behind her head as she stared up at the ceiling. Even with the lights off and the blind down there was enough light coming in the window for her gaze to trace its outlines.

There was a game she played on these sleepless nights, first invented in the days following her parents' murders when she was too afraid to close her eyes. She imagined the shape of the ceiling as a blank canvas, then filled it in with a picture, portrait or street scene or still life or even abstract design. Anything would work, so long as it took up the whole space and incorporated the grey circle of the smoke detector in the far left corner. In Donald's old tenement apartment there had been a water stain, too, a slowly-spreading brown blotch that Dickory had cast in hundreds of roles – a boulder in the park, a monster's eyebrow, a cloud of smoke from the tailpipe of a cab.

Tonight the ceiling was a window with a view of a city skyline. But not New York, the city outside her actual window, in the full flower of spring: instead it was Chicago in black and white, rain-drenched and glimmering with the light of three hundred skyscrapers. It seemed such a romantic place in her imaginings, so clean, so bright. Not like New York.

Even despite living in Garson's downstairs apartment rent-free for three years now, even despite the fact that working as his assistant paid well enough to cover her school tuition and supplies – even despite all of that, there was part of Dickory that still thought of herself as poor. As the girl who came from the tenements, the girl who pawned her watch to pay the electricity bill, the girl whose brother drove a bus for a living and never shut up about it. And it was New York, she thought, that wouldn't let her stop being that girl, wouldn't let her forget. If she could just leave New York, maybe she could make a new life for herself. Be someone else.

But there were things she didn't want to leave. She'd miss knowing the city, knowing all the parks and secret places to paint that only locals ever saw. She'd miss George, who had become a good friend. She'd miss trying to come up with ways to make Isaac laugh. She'd miss solving crimes for Chief Quinn.

She'd miss Garson.

And once she let herself think about missing him, all the other things followed. It was dark, and she was alone, and so she could admit that she was attracted to him. She'd noticed he was good looking right from the start – tanned, trim – but it had been a cold attractiveness, almost bland. Off-putting. It hadn't been until she'd seen him lose control that she'd begun to want him.

What would he be like, if she kissed him? Would he be as passionate, as intense, as he was with the few things that he truly cared about? Would he put his hands in her hair? Would his lips be warm?

The ceiling's image changed, Chicago melting beneath the rain to be replaced with an image of his face, those blue eyes looking kindly into hers. Dickory closed her eyes briefly against her imaginings, but it didn't help.

This was why she hadn't been able to ask Garson about Chicago. Because if he said go, it would mean she was good enough. But it would also mean that he wasn't asking her to stay.


	2. Chapter 2

She left in the morning without seeing him. When she got to campus it was still twenty minutes before she was due to meet George, and Dickory was walking past Ann's desk, she had a sudden thought.

"Ann," she said, turning and going back. "Can I ask you something?"

The secretary looked up from the pile of files she was sorting. "Go ahead."

"How long have you worked here?" Dickory wanted to ask if she remembered any particular students who had a history of theft.

Ann looked at her suspiciously. "Ten years. Why?"

It probably wasn't the best idea to say flat out that she was looking for a thief. "Just curious," Dickory said. "You must have seen an awful lot of students through here over the years."

"Oh, yes," said Ann. "Thousands." She sounded completely unenthusiastic about it, which struck Dickory as odd. It wasn't exactly an exciting job, but it was practically cushy in comparison to driving a bus for a living, for example.

"Do you not like art?" she asked, genuinely curious now. "Or is it just the students?" She didn't dare suggest that maybe it was D'Arches that Ann hated, even though she thought it a serious possibility. The man was insufferable.

"I like art," said Ann flatly. "I even—" She cut herself off.

"Mm?" Dickory made an encouraging noise.

"I applied to the program here," Ann said, almost unwillingly. "Didn't get in."

"Oh," said Dickory. "That's too bad." She knew she sounded stupid, but couldn't think of anything better to say.

Ann shrugged. "Doesn't matter." But there was a tense set to the way she was holding the stack of files that told Dickory it does matter.

Dickory decided this probably wasn't a good time to start asking questions about disaffected artists. "Well, I hope you find something you like more, then. Anyway, got to go!" She gave a cheery wave and walked away quickly. _Okay, that was uncomfortable._

She didn't want to think about what it was like to be the kind of artist who wasn't good enough to get accepted to art school. It was too much like poor Isaac. Too much like her own worries about the MFA program.

When she rounded the corner of the hallway George was already there, waiting outside the storage room and looking a bit impatient. But he seemed to sense her unrest, because after she unlocked the door he propped it open without speaking, and they started in on the work together.

They worked for a half hour without saying much before Dickory broke the silence. "So Chief Quinn brought us another case yesterday," she said. She was looking at Harold's portfolio now, so thoroughly bored that she needed something to distract herself.

"Oh yeah?" George said. "What was it?"

"Art theft," Dickory said. "But freaky. Whoever it is steals the pictures replaces them with his own paintings that look sort of the same. Not forgeries. Just similar work. Garson thinks it's ego. You know, put your own stuff in among the masters."

"Weird," said George. "Are they any good?" Someone shuffled past in the hallway, and Dickory checked her watch. They still had fifteen minutes before class.

"They're decent, but…" She shrugged. "Not like what was taken. I could pick out the replacements pretty quickly. Even the Pollock knock-off. Maybe Smith's endless drilling about confidence in brushwork finally sunk in. Still, that doesn't help us find him. 'Second-rate artist' could fit a hundred thousand people in this city."

"No kidding," said George. "But listen, Dickory. _You're_ not second-rate. I know I promised not to badger you about Chicago, but—"

But Dickory wasn't listening. Instead she was looking down at a sketch in the portfolio, a drawing of three women seated around a table. It was unmistakably the same design as the replacement painting for the stolen Picasso, the one whose technique Dickory had vaguely recognized.

_Harold?_ she thought. _Harold Silverfish is the thief?_

George was skeptical. "Are we talking about the same Harold Silverfish? He's not remotely some sort of criminal mastermind, Dickory."

"I know, I know," Dickory said. "But… I'd swear this is the sketch that goes with that painting." She hesitated. "And he has been arrested before. You remember, back in our first year."

"Yeah, but that was because of D'Arches," said George. "And it was just vandalism, not some massive art heist. Come on. Can you picture Harold sneaking anywhere?"

Dickory had to admit he had a point. Harold was whiny, annoying, and a terrible grade-grubber. But he didn't really strike her as a thief. "But it's _definitely_ his work. So how the hell did it get there?" She ran a hand through her hair, considering. "Why go to all that trouble to stick someone else's painting up on a wall? What's the point?"

"I don't know," George said. He looked at his watch. "Look, we have to get to class. But he'll be there. Maybe we can talk to him after?"

"Yeah," said Dickory. "Good idea." She tucked Harold's portfolio into her bag.

But Harold wasn't in class. D'Arches droned on for an hour and a half about creating a sense of elegance and flow in exhibit design; Dickory didn't register a word of it. All she could think of was getting home to tell Garson about what she'd discovered. When class ended, George asked if she wanted to work on their project some more, but Dickory shook her head.

"I want to see what Garson thinks," she said. "If it _is_ Harold…" George looked exasperated, so Dickory said, "Look, take the key. You can pull out whatever you think is good, and I'll take a look at it when I get a chance. Or don't, and I'll come back and look at the rest of it tomorrow. I don't want to dump on you, but this is— I have to do this." She pulled the key out of her pocket, and after a moment he took it.

"Fine, I'll do some more sorting. But we have to start writing the labels tomorrow, okay? I don't want to be scrambling at the last minute."

Impulsively, Dickory gave him a hug. "Thanks, George. You're the best friend I could ask for."

George's face went pink beneath the freckles. "Yeah, well." He shrugged. "Go on, then. Get out of here."

Dickory went.

She walked home as quickly as she could, feeling the weight of Harold's portfolio in her bag with every step of the way. When she got to Cobble Lane she unlocked the door and took the stairs up to Garson's apartment two at a time, bursting into the studio where she expected to find him painting. Instead he was in the library with Chief Quinn, bent over the pile of photographs.

"Oh, Chief Quinn," said Dickory. "It's good you're here. I found the artist of one of the paintings! Only he's a student, and I don't think he can possibly be the thief because, I mean, it's _Harold_. But I was looking through all the stuff from everyone in our curatorship class, and I found—" She slung her bag onto the table and pulled out the portfolio, flipping through until she reached the sketch of the three women. "It's this one, which has to be the sketch for—" She paused for breath, looked up, and then hesitated. "What?"

Both Garson and Chief Quinn were looking at her with shifty expressions. "What?" she said again.

"There was another theft overnight," Garson said finally. He slid a photograph across to her, and Dickory picked it up.

She recognized it instantly. It was a landscape painting, the Empire State Building at dusk with the sunset glowing behind it. And it was signed, almost illegibly, in the bottom right corner: 'Dick Ory.'

* * *

When the rushing noise in Dickory's ears stopped and she could hear again, she realized that Garson was talking. "I think that's what confused me so much about the others, the first time we looked at them. They didn't go together. I figured it was because they'd been painted to look similar to the things that were stolen. But the different styles make a lot more sense if you know they're from different artists. And the difference in quality, too."

"Hmm," said Chief Quinn. "You think they're all different?"

"Yes, I think so," said Garson. He was watching her carefully out of the corner of his eyes now, his gaze wary.

_Observing,_ Dickory realized. _He really thinks it might be me!_ The thought made her see red. _Oh, yes, Dickory. She lives in a tenement, so she must be a thief!_ It was a sentiment she'd heard far too many times in her life, and not one she'd expected from Garson. She swallowed hard and gave him a stiff nod. "That makes sense," she said, trying to keep her voice even. She reached for Harold's portfolio again and pulled out the sketch of the three women. "Because that one is definitely Harold's."

Garson pulled out the photograph of the painting with the three women from the pile and compared it with the sketch. "Yes, I agree."

Even Chief Quinn had to admit they were nearly identical. "I suppose so," he said grudgingly, and then, as if saying it had switched something in his brain, "Obviously _you_ aren't the thief, Dickory. Never thought you would be." He shifted in his chair. "But how on earth would someone get hold of student work? If we assume it's all from students."

Angry words rose in her throat, but she knew better than to quibble with that 'obviously.' "There are a million ways," she said instead. "Easiest would be to take it out of a classroom where things are in progress." Now that she had something to focus on, she could feel her shock receding. "But you could also break into a professor's office. Towards the end of term they've each got a stash of work for grading. Or, hmm." She chewed a fingernail.

"That still doesn't address the question of _why_, though," said Garson, setting Harold's sketch back onto the table.

"To disguise the thefts as long as possible," said Chief Quinn, impatiently.

Garson shook his head, but didn't bother arguing further. He sat back in his chair. "Well, chief, if I was you, I'd start checking with all the art schools in the city, see if there have been any thefts of student work reported. Maybe that will give a clue as to how the thief got Dickory's painting, as well."

The chief gave him a disgruntled look, then shoved his chair back and stood. "I suppose Winkle doesn't have anything better to do today – he can start calling around. If you two think of anything else, let me know."

"_Absolutely_," said Dickory, and showed him out.

When she got back up to the studio, Garson was standing in front of his easel. Dickory gritted her teeth, still mad, but decided to change the subject rather than argue. "How was dinner at the Vogels?" she asked.

"Fine," he said absently. He wasn't painting, just examining the half-finished picture of the businessman.

"Are you going to do a portrait for them?" she tried again.

Garson made a negative noise, but it was obvious he wasn't really paying attention. Dickory tried a different tack. "Shall I get the hats, Inspector Noserag?"

This, at least, made him turn. "What? Oh, no, Dickory. Not today."

Perhaps, reminded a small voice in the back of Dickory's brain, she ought not to ask questions. But she was too mad to listen to it. "Do you not want to talk about it because you actually thought I was the thief?"

Now he did look at her, surprise written across his face for a brief moment before it went blank. "Don't be ridiculous, Dickory," he said. "Of course you aren't the thief."

"Why not?" Dickory heard herself say. "After all, to you my work must be just as third-rate as all the other paintings the thief chose."

"If you really think you're third-rate," Garson said harshly, "then why are you applying to MFA programs?"

Dickory flinched back. "How do you know about that?"

His anger disappeared as quickly as it had come, his face settling into the expressionless mask that Dickory had come to hate. "Your brother came to see me yesterday. He indicated that he had some strong opinions on the subject."

The man with the resentful shoulders who she had seen exiting Cobble Lane on her way home. "That was Donald?" Dickory realized she was gaping and shut her mouth with a snap. "That little— Ooh!" She was really angry now. "He had no right!"

"He seemed to think he was looking out for your well-being," Garson said. He sounded almost diffident.

Dickory made a dismissive noise. "'If someone had supported me when I was your age,'" she mimicked an old saying of Donald's, "'maybe I wouldn't be driving a bus back and forth all day.' So much for that!" She gave Garson a defiant look. "And? Well?"

"Well what?" he said.

"Am I wasting my time applying?" she said. "Should I give it up and sell my soul to an ad agency, move out into my own crappy tenement walk-up and just be happy I'm not driving a bus all day?"

"Dickory..." said Garson, stiffly polite. "I'm sure you'll do very well at whatever you choose to do."

Dickory stamped her foot in irritation. "Shut up," she said. "For god's sake! Do you even listen to yourself? You've turned into something as flat as that god-awful painting!" Her hand stabbed out in the direction of the businessman's portrait. "At least _Edgar Sonneborg_ had an actual opinion."

Before the words had even finished coming out of her mouth Dickory was completely appalled at herself. Garson's face went white, and then red, and then he turned away so that she couldn't see his expression at all.

"Garson," she choked out. "I'm— I didn't mean— I'm sorry—"

"It doesn't matter," he said. The words were precise and cold. "I think it's best if I find a new assistant, however. The apartment, of course, is yours for as long as you need it." He went up the stairs before she could say anything else, and closed the door behind him. Dickory burst into tears.

* * *

It took her nearly five minutes to get enough of a hold on herself to be able to go downstairs, and by the time she was slumped over in her bed the shakes had arrived.

_What an absolutely unforgivable thing to say,_ she thought, when she could manage actual sentences in her head instead of wordless misery. _God. I'm horrible._ She couldn't stop thinking about the tightness of his face after she'd said it. _Well done, Dickory._

This was why she hated New York, Dickory decided. It was a hateful city, and that was what it had made her – hateful Dickory, cruel Dickory. She had fancied herself a haunted angel, her face turned towards the skies. But when it came down to it, she was as wretched and gutter-bound as the worst of them. Worse, even, because he'd saved her life, he'd supported her dreams, and all she'd done to repay him was throw it back in his face.

_If he painted me now, what face would he give me?_ The thought sent her into a fresh spasm of weeping.

The afternoon passed. Twice Dickory tried to make herself read, but each time gave it up after a few minutes of staring blankly at the page. At dinnertime, she heard Isaac's lumbering tread on the stairs, and the reminder of Garson's kindness was like a punch to the stomach. Before she could think about what she was doing, she grabbed the envelope with her MFA application from the bedside table and fled the house.

There was a mail box at the end of Cobble Lane. Dickory stared at it for a long moment, then, in one swift move, opened the flap and shoved the envelope inside. It shut with a metallic clank. _There,_ she thought. _There. It's done._

Suddenly exhausted, she looked in both directions down 7th Avenue. _What now?_ She couldn't go home. _Donald—_ But no, she was still too angry with Donald, though the emotion was pale in comparison with her own self-loathing.

_To school_. They still hadn't answered the question of how the thief had gotten access to the students' work, and if she was just going to be somewhere, anywhere that wasn't Garson's house, she might as well try to do something useful with herself.

She registered nothing of the walk to campus, only her own ceaseless litany of recriminations. When she arrived, the buildings were dark, classes long since over. Dickory slipped through the door to the Fine Arts department, her shoes almost silent on the linoleum tiles of the entryway. There was Ann's desk, there Professor D'Arches' office, and beyond them both the hallway. Dickory could see that the door to the storage room was open, a light shining from inside.

_George,_ she thought, quickening her steps. _He must still be working on the project._ How she wanted to see him now, her steadfast friend in spite of everything. He'd know what to say – not to make it all right, nothing could make it all right – but to get her through it.

But it wasn't George.

It was Ann, her hands rifling through a box of unframed canvases as efficiently as if they were file folders.

Dickory gasped. "You!"

Ann's expression was briefly panicked before it slid into a sneer. "Yes, me! Finally figured it out, have you? You're all the same, you artists. If I haven't got a paintbrush in my hand, I might as well not even exist," she spat.

"But—" said Dickory, too shocked to do anything but stand there.

"_But_," Ann mimicked nastily. "But what?"

"Why?" Dickory burst out.

Ann laughed. It wasn't a pleasant laugh. "Because art is a sham," she said. "It's an industry, churning out nothing but frauds who can make pretty pictures to hang on the walls of New York's new money. It's not what you can do, but who you know, whether you can talk the right line. You know that Monet? I stuck up a painting in its place, made by an eighteen year old girl from Tennessee, and no one even noticed for two days."

Dickory thought of Garson's slick portraits, of how the rich of New York lined up to see themselves as bland and blemish-free as they wished to be. She thought of her classmates, most of them happy to spend four years dabbling in whatever style the professors wanted and then go on to easy jobs with good pay.

But then she thought of the Sonneborg paintings, the way Julius Panzpresser had seen one and then spent fifteen years looking for another. She thought of George's watercolors, the way they sometimes made her catch her breath. Of the different pieces she'd seen in museums and galleries all over the city – not every piece, not even most, but many – that had captured her attention for minutes or hours, left her startled to find that the rest of the world still existed.

"You're wrong," she said, but Ann clearly wasn't listening.

"And then when real art, _true_ art comes along, what do they do?" she ranted. "They throw it away and tell you to take up stenography. Did you know that I came back two years later looking for a job and he didn't recognize me? The great observer MacDonald D'Arches and he didn't even recognize me. They're blind, girl! There's none so blind as an artist."

It was all too easy for Dickory to imagine how Ann must have felt when her art school application had been rejected. "You could try again," she said, feeling a surge of empathy. "It's not too late! Another school—"

"Pfah!" said Ann. "They're all the same. You're all the same. But it doesn't matter now. I haven't got a paintbrush in my hand. They'll never find me." She gave Dickory a brief, hard look – and then rushed at her, hands curled into claws.

Dickory screamed, holding up her arms to ward off the attack. Ann pushed past her, shoving her painfully into the corner of the storage room door, and then she was gone.

It was only after she disappeared that Dickory realized it hadn't been an attack at all – it was only that she'd been standing in the doorway. She ran after her briefly, then stopped short. _What am I going to do? Drag her off to the station myself?_ Instead she went to Ann's desk, picked up the phone with one trembling hand, and called Chief Quinn.

* * *

She waited nearly twenty minutes in front of the storage room before he arrived, both Winkle and Finkel trailing behind him. "Winkle, fingerprints," he said, gesturing. "Finkel, go through the desk. You okay, Hickory?"

Dickory decided to let the nickname slide. She told him the whole story – well, the whole story of her thought to investigate, omitting the details of what she and Garson had argued about – of finding Ann, of their conversation. The chief listened without speaking, and when she was done all he did was pat her on the shoulder.

"You've got to stop getting involved in situations like this," he muttered. "Maybe I shouldn't have—"

"No," said Dickory. "No, chief, it's fine. I'm fine. Honest."

He gave her a long look, then nodded. Just then, then phone on Ann's desk rang, and Finkel answered it. "Yeah? Uh huh. Yeah. Good. I'll tell the chief." When he hung up, he said, "Dinkel found her at her apartment, packing. He's taking her in now."

"Good," said Chief Quinn. He looked at Dickory. "Finkel's going to drive you home."

Dickory was too tired to argue. It wasn't until the police car pulled up in front of the house in Cobble Lane that she started to have second thoughts. Maybe she _should_ go to Donald's. But it seemed like a long way to go, and it was getting cold, and in the end she just told Finkel 'Thanks' and got out of the car, pulling her keys from her pocket.

She unlocked the front door. Inside, Garson was sitting on the bottom step, and he stood up so quickly that he almost tripped over his own feet.

"Dickory!" he said. "When you didn't come back, I thought— And then Chief Quinn called, and— Thank god you're safe!" And then, before Dickory could say a word, he kissed her.

It was everything like she had imagined, and nothing like she had imagined. His mouth was warm, lips soft and faintly chapped, as if he'd been biting them. She could see the bright blue of his eyes looking into hers with the same searching intensity of the day before, and now knew it for what it was – a question. He smelled like paint. His right hand cupped her face, and she could feel the tremor in it where skin touched skin.

She put her hands on his waist and kissed him back.

Garson made a noise in the back of his throat and pulled her closer, his trembling hand curling into her hair. "Dickory," he said against her lips. "Oh, _god._"

They kissed and kissed again. Beneath his hands and mouth Dickory felt herself transformed into something beautiful, and she clung to him until her heart was beating too hard to think. Finally she pulled her mouth away from his with a gasp, pressing her forehead to his cheek.

For a moment they stood in silence. Then Dickory forced herself to meet his gaze. "I'm _so_ sorry," she said. "So—" Her voice caught.

He closed his eyes, but didn't let her go. "You were right," he said, his voice low. "About... what I've made myself into. But it was always easier. Easier to be someone else than to face up to my own failures, my own weaknesses. If I couldn't care about anything, then I couldn't mess it up, you see."

"I'm sorry," she said helplessly.

"It's been so long," he said. "Since Edgar Sonneborg even existed. I thought I'd killed him. Even just three years ago I thought I'd finally done it. The world didn't need him, so he was gone." He swallowed, rubbing his thumb against the base of her neck. "But you made me think that maybe someone needed him. That maybe _I_ needed him."

It occurred to Dickory for the first time that he had lived as Garson for almost twenty years – that he had been Garson longer now than he had ever been Edgar Sonneborg. Maybe it wasn't as easy as calling one fake and one real.

But— "Maybe you don't have to choose," Dickory said slowly. "Maybe you don't have to be—" she hesitated, "—thoughtless Edgar Sonneborg any more than I have to be heartless Dickory. We can be who we make ourselves."

He kissed her again.

"If you'll stay," he said, when they stopped the second time. "If you'll stay and help me. There are MFA programs in New York, too."

"You really think—" Dickory started, then cut herself off, regretting the question immediately. "I mean—"

He tilted her chin up so he could look her in the eye. "I do. You've got a good eye. And that's the truth."

She let out a puff of breath, and nodded. They looked at each other for a long moment, then Garson suddenly let go of her. "What am I doing? I haven't even let you sit down! You're not hurt, are you? Chief Quinn said— but I should have asked—"

"I'm fine," Dickory reassured him. "Really. Just a little bruised. And tired." Now that he wasn't touching her, she could feel herself settling back to earth.

"Come upstairs," he said. "Tell me what happened." He sounded like Garson again, but it didn't bother her now. She followed him up the stairs to the studio, and he poured her a cup of coffee before they settled into two chairs in the library. After a moment he put a hand on her arm, as if to reassure himself she was still there. "So?"

She told the story for the second time. When she'd finished, Garson stared off into the distance for a long moment, not speaking. Dickory drank her coffee and let him think for a while; Ann's situation was close enough to poor Isaac's that she knew it must have been difficult for him to hear. Finally, just as she was considering saying something, he shook himself. Dickory turned her hand over and laced their fingers together, feeling greatly daring.

Garson gave her a warm glance. "I'm all right," he said.

"At least I didn't need you to save me this time," Dickory said, aiming for lightness.

Garson stared at her for a moment, then cracked a smile. "Of course you didn't. I mean, you _are_ a native New Yorker."


End file.
